Fadiman believes that psychedelic molecules such as lysergic acid diethylamide are potential blessings cast into the shadows by hysteria in the 1960s and thus almost wholly lost to legal use, and thus to science, for close to half a century.

Experiments during the 1960s with lysergic acid di-whatchamacalit, or “LSD,” on the other hand, tended to produce works with opening lines such as the following: “It was a dark and stormy night, and as I looked out the win—OH MY GOD—THE CARPET IS EATING MY TOENAILS!”

Even though her audience is only slightly older than Bieber's, Perry's Pierre et Gilles-in-a-sweet-shop theme has a lysergic edge to it, made plain when Perry bites into a "special" brownie proffered by a couple of mimes.

But much of it makes the dreadful mistake of hailing Harrison's 60s delusion that you could make a good record by taking the genuine magic of the sitar and bolting on top a monotonous dirge enlivened with a few lysergic "insights".

As in the Netherlands for many years, attendees at the conference took for granted a sharp distinction between hard drugs such as cocaine, heroin, and methamphetamine, which are clearly destructive, and relatively non-addictive and visionary substances such as psilocybin, mescaline, lysergic acid diethylamide, and ayahuasca, as well as marijuana and MDMA (or Ecstasy).